Acknowledgments
My gratitude goes to Husam al-Din Ismaiʿil for his generous help with my fieldwork in Cairo in libraries and in my search for khizanat kutubs in Mamluk buildings, and for many other favors. I am also grateful to Richard Goldthwaite for inspiring ideas about the book as a commodity and Konrad Hirschler for precious advice and comments on the manuscript, Alison Ohta for generously sharing her knowledge and experience with Mamluk manuscripts, Bernard O’Kane for his photographs, Rosalind Wade Haddon and Rudolf Abraham for their stylistic corrections, Leonor Fernandes, Bora Keskiner, Ladan Akbarnia and Tim Stanley for help and favors that facilitated my work.
I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewer of the manuscript for his/her very pertinent and useful comments and suggestions.